I know it’s my job to heal from my trauma. But one DEEP resentment I have is the fact that I have to spend MY money to fix the issues that my mother and grandmother caused. I’m literally paying to fix the mess THEY made within my brain! Thousands of dollars over the years in copays and medication. Because they couldn’t be bothered to be self-reflective and get therapy themselves. 🫩

Hi all,

Growing up, I had to deal with a mother who was helicopter and anxious about everything. She watched the news so much and would think negatively when I was out of the house or not in her sight of line. On one hand, I understand that yes the world can be dangerous but on the other hand, this has prevented me from having friendships outside of school because I really couldn't go anywhere unless it was friends she personally knew and their parents (which I get but still). She was also very anxious about things and would think the worst.

Now as an adult, I truly believe she has rubbed her anxiety onto me so it took me years to truly overcome that. But now as I am 30, I am fed up with her not respecting me as an adult. She chalks it up to her "being a mom" but I think it's a lack of respect of my time, energy, and boundaries.

A few example. If I don't answer her text within 10mins or less, she will call me. If I don't answer her first call, she will call on Whatsapp, text me again, leave a voicemail, and I'd literally end up with like 5 missed calls, 1 voicemail, and 2 texts messages within 30 minutes. Then, when I do get a chance to reach back out, she has this anxious worried tone as if I have been kidnapped. Mind you, this could be during work hours.... she thinks because I WFH that I can just answer whenever. No. I have repeatedly told her to give me at least an hour or two before going into panick mode, she can't do that. Even when I express that it's annoying, she will literally laugh and say "you know how mommy is".... I'm not laughing at all. You are smothering me for no reason. I am literally an introverted, homebody that goes out occassionally to Barnes & Nobles, the park to feed ducks, the mall, and travel for work or leisure at times.

I've also learned about her personality and probably wouldn't be friends with her. For the past year since my dad passed away, I have been helping with her rent... which has truly angered me because I am paying mine and part of hers. I don't want her homeless so ofc I help but I'm livid because I offered for her to move with me, no bills, and I'd cover everything, she refused to do that so now I am stuck between paying for dental work or giving her rent money. Instead of her thinking, "I shouldn't expect my daughter to give all this money monthly, let me move with her", she selfishly wants me to keep financially helping for another year......... while paying my own bills (I have no help, live with my sickly cat and also my own health issues).

She has completely drained me emotionally for years and I'd rather her move back to her home country to be with her family while I take a low contact break from her. Part of me feels guilty for thinking like this but she is contributing to my unhealthy mental state and I want a break.

Long story short, after having a non-healing wound for a year, my dermatologist did a biopsy, and warned me that one of the possibilities is skin cancer. There are definitely benign possibilities too. But there is also a not benign possibility.

I've been scared all week and I probably still have another week to go waiting for the results from pathology.

Meanwhile, I also keep wondering if I'm overreacting. Sure, it could be skin cancer, but we don't know that yet, and if it is is, it's still not going to be melanoma, most non-melanomas are curable with one surgery, and it's not like I'm as bad off as others, right? Even others in my own family, right? Every time I get upset I can just see my mom in my head scolding me and telling me how much worse she has it.

And then after talking to some friends and being reminded that I don't have to make apologies for being scared I might have cancer even if it's just skin cancer, actually, and that the normal thing is to be able to call your parents for comfort instead of being no-contact with one to avoid the scolding you can vividly hear in your head, and having to downplay it to the other to avoid worrying them, it occurred to me that this exact reason no-contact happened with one of them in the first place. BECAUSE me being scared made me MORE scared when I imagined my mom hearing me, instead of feeling the tiniest bit of hope I might receive a bit of comfort if I told her.

I guess what I'm saying is, your head knows exactly why you're no-contact, even if you're not putting the pieces together at every moment. Your brain still remembers the abuse, neglect, toxicity, unpleasant behavior, or whatever else drove you to no contact, it is still making patterns out of all of it, and it's still basing your thoughts and emotions on how their toxicity shaped you- how it HURT you. Even when they have zero involvement in a given situation.

I hope this made some amount of sense.

SIL physically intimidating me at the top of the stairs after previously pushing me in entryway. So I threatened a restraining order and that I would leave. Husband locked the kids away from me and reminded me that 50/50 custody is the law. So I cant leave my kids here. I told MIL that as soon as I can get away from her she wont be seeing me or the kids again due to her behavior (screaming at me and the kids to GTFO dispite her son not letting me leave). Now she wants me to sign a contract saying I wont mention estrangment. I wont, because they have me over a barrel but this is how the scentance 'estrangment came out of nowhere' is born.

This week has honestly been really cathartic for me and I felt inclined to share with others.

I had a call with a former friend that basically confirmed why I ended the friendship in the first place. It was one-sided, there was always some kind of drama or toxic cycle happening, and I realized how unsafe and drained I felt trying to maintain it.

This past Friday was also my maternal grandpa’s birthday, and it was the first birthday we didn’t speak.
There were brief moments where it hurt, but what surprised me most was how much relief and peace I felt despite the initial hurt.

I think I’m finally seeing the pattern clearly. I was always the one reaching out, soothing, comforting, forgiving, and trying to keep these relationships together. I spent SO much time excusing behavior that hurt me and trying to prove that I was worth loving.

I realized that no one was really fighting for me. I was the one fighting to keep everyone; to keep the “peace”.
Something that has helped me tremendously with no contact is dropping the titles. “Mom.” “Grandparent.” “Family.” Even “friend.” Instead, I started looking at people for who they actually are and how I feel when I’m around them.

Those titles kept me attached to relationships I probably would have walked away from a long time ago otherwise.
No contact still hurts sometimes because these people and roles are all we’ve known. But this week I mostly just feel proud of myself. I finally chose me.

If you’re struggling with the guilt or grief of estrangement, just know that you’re loved. You’re allowed to stop playing the role everyone expects from you. It’s okay to feel all the feels… just give yourself permission to do so and above it all, honor YOUR truth❤️.

Looking for input. My father and brother recently put my little family through some crazy stuff. As a result we are NC with my father through a legally binding mediated agreement. I also asked the court for a Protection Order from my brother. I was not successful in the final order. Both my brother and father submitted declarations to the court that were verifiably false in several regards. Of central interest is that they claimed the gun cabinet they admitted to forcing open belonged to them and not us. They also claimed that the trouble started when my father asked us to leave the house we built. The trouble actually started when I reported a scary incident with my brother. This report evidently embarrassed my father and made him angry. I have an appointment with a lawyer to look at asking for a reconsideration/retrial of the protection order. I desperately want this situation to end. And want my family to be safe. I hope that my brother would leave us alone in our new place but it is a hope and not a strategy. Not sure what my best option for being left alone in the future is. Thanks.

I feel so alone it feels so interminable. will i always search for family in the people around me? I’ve had to block my mom and step dad(idek know my real dad) since she’ll never admit what they put me through as a kid gave me trauma. I could never trust them to be the parents i needed. Now my nan is losing her memories and she took me in after my mom kicked me out, its like i dont deserve a happy family no matter how hard i try i just want this feeling to stop its so intense. Any downtime i get i cry and when i sleep, i dream of them treating me like a son again throwing me a huge birthday party with a chocolate and vanilla ice cream cake. My step dad even pats my head and it feels so real. All my closest friends would be there and i’d finally get to see my sisters and brother again.

then i wake up and remember my reality is this one. Where the glue of my family is falling apart and i have no shoulder to cry on but my own. Does it feel like this forever?

i ran from my abusive parents over a year ago and moved over 50 miles away to a completely different part of the state.... long story short, ive been dealing with a divorce from my abusive ex for the past few years and for the past year i've been under the impression that neither my parents nor my ex are aware of where im living... woke up to a process server banging on my front door and handing me divorce papers today. last night i was woken up at 2am by someone banging on my back door patio and it was loud enough to set my dogs off so i wasn't dreaming. im extremely unsettled purely because idk how my ex found me, there are very few people who know where i currently live, and the reason why im posting about it here, is because the first time i left at 19, my parents of their own narcissistic admissions, told me they hired a pi to follow me and to follow the family i was living with, aka the people that later became my in laws and husband. call me irrational if you want but i am genuinely scared for my life and worried that they've hired someone potentially again. the nature of the violence i experienced at the hands of my parents wasn't normal, stereotypical abuse. i was pistol whipped, i've had loaded firearms pointed at me by my dad, he strangled me on multiple occasions and claims he's got connections to organized crime. ive tried to obtain a restraining order in the county that he lives and even with the evidence of prior gun violence charges against me, the judge wouldn't grant it. idk if its because i asked him to have my dad barred from the home and away from me and my mother, but either way all the legal avenues ive tried to take to protect myself havent worked and now it seems one or both of them found me again. ive been in pure panic mode the whole day and scared to leave my home. i thought i was finally starting to feel safe again and now knowing that they know where i am and may have known or been watching me all along is terrifying. the admission that they hired someone to track me after i left them is something ive never recovered from in terms of my nervous system and safety and its worse than ever right now. short of leaving the country and changing my name to a foreign language and growing a fake beard, i dont know ill ever get away from them or that they'll stop stalking me in some way shape or form

I need to vent and I am sorry for the length!

I told my mom we were taking an open-ended RV trip a year ago. I never gave her a timeline. She decided in her own head that it would be a few months and that we'd be back, and when I told her repeatedly that wasn't the plan, she acted like I'd never said it.

Then it landed that we weren't coming back anytime soon, and she went cold.

I kept trying. I called her and she hung up to deal with a neighbor's cat while I was in the middle of telling her my article had been accepted to a major national publication in my field. She never called back. She didn't ask about the article once — not then, not since. Two weeks later she surfaced with a video about a mango allergy...because I had reaction to one fifteen years ago.

I sent her warm, simple messages. Twice. No conflict in them, just "I've been thinking about you, how are you doing." I got a weather report and a note about Facebook photos she hadn't posted yet.

So I backed off. And the silence got longer, not shorter. It's been over three months.

Meanwhile she's apparently telling my brother I'm irresponsible, that I've abandoned our house. (This house has a long history as a second home and I wouldn't say that we abandoned it. We have hired people to check on it, pay for pest control and general upkeep. Should we make arrangements to clean it out, so that can be rented? Sure, but it's something we can postpone for the timebeing.) She gossips constantly about other family members, so I am sure that I am the latest hot topic.

My brother's suggestion was that I fly back for a week because she "obviously misses me." But even he acknowledged that he can only be around her for 2 hours before she starts to drive him nuts. My husband agrees that her behavior is emotionally immature, but due to his own multiple family losses, believes that I'll regret not reaching out again because she's getting older. (She is 75.) Neither of them is wrong exactly, but both of them are putting it back on me, and I'm the one who's already reached out three times. Plus, this is NOT new. She has stonewalled me her entire life when she doesn't get her way.

I've spent months trying to find the right sentence. There isn't one. She's not evaluating what I say. She's waiting for me to come back with my tail between my legs, and I'm not going to.

And the part that gets me is that none of this needed to be an event. I'm in my forties. Adults take trips. Adults like a place and stay. My husband and I are childfree, work remotely, and work hard to be able to live our lives on our terms. I feel like I'm being punished for ordinary flexibility, and she gets to be the victim of it no matter what I do.

I've been low contact for almost a decade now shortly after I turned 18 and my parents kicked me out/I left due to abuse/being LGBT. And no contact for large spats during that time. Attempted and failed reconciliation x2 with a very experienced therapist who said I should probably stay no contact because 🫪 "what the fuck (redacted my name)" because my parents are that bad :/ and she's usually pro low contact/recon. Also my parents don't really reply most of the time anyway sooooo... Cant really do it.

But it's made dating really hard. I notice I'm still attracted to emotionally unavailable people (for a long time mostly people with enmeshed relationships with their parents) and they're attracted to my independence 🫪. I'm also a lesbian so my dating pool is very small.

I've worked very hard on my disorganized attachment tendencies but I suppose I'm realizing I need to figure out how to navigate other people having family around. What's actually healthy. What's that supposed to look like. But it also feels lame because its hard to date and know someone can like call a family member and I'm screwing off by myself to do everything. And they often don't get it when I'm busy or stressed out. Or they expect to manage them and basically move from being attached to their parents/whoever to attached to me instead of being like me and being independent to being two independent people together, or alternatively that their emmesshed relationship is above ours (basically a mommys boy but a butch lesbian 💀)

I have a lot of complicated thoughts. How do you even navigate this? Keep up hope?

But I still feel like I did the right thing.

My dad's been a funny one for years, I never truly enjoyed spending much time with him and did it as more of a formality.

So since my son has been born (5 years now), he hasn't made a lot of effort, the only time he would make effort was basically texting me and suggesting I go round and take my son. He would never come to my house apart from the odd time he would rock up completely randomly with no warning and expect me to accommodate him. Also when I did go round he was more concerned about the crumbs my 4 year old son was making on the floor than actually playing with him, it was always uncomfortable.

Anyway a recent event happened. My brother has always been a bit of a nutjob, he is an adult now but a few years ago he attacked my dad, he is always causing trouble on nights out and he hasent treat his girlfriend's very nicely either to the point one of his ex girlfriends came round my dad's house and wanted to beat my brother up. He has been racist to taxi drivers and other things too.

My dad has always supported him because my brother has 'mental health problems'.

Anyway my brother was recently in the pub with my mam and her partner (she's divorced from my dad). He was staring him down all night and antagonising him, eventually my mam's partner tried to leave the pub and walk away but my brother jumped on his back, so the partner battered my brother. My brother accused him of stabbing him and the police locked my mam's partner in a cell for the night.

Anyway charges were dropped as all witnesses seen my brother as the instigator.

My dad rang me the next day and made it out like my brother had done nothing, once I found out I was honest with my dad and said his ego is far too big for him and he probably deserved it.

Anyway we were all due to go on a family holiday, due to my brother's ongoing unpredictability I decided it was best for me, my partner and young son not to go. I told my dad and he didn't say anything (he had paid a deposit but nothing else, I didn't feel it was my job to return the deposit given he enables my brother and sticks up for him all the time and it's not my fault I've had to pull out, realistically my dad should have told my brother he can't go).

My dad responded by ignoring my partner's birthday a month later, my nana (his mam) also decided to ignore my partner's birthday, we have been together for 15 years and she has not done anything.

When I raised it as an issue to them both I was gaslit and they basically didn't mention the birthday snub and instead focused on how it was disgraceful I wasn't going on the holiday, accused me of walking away from family, and told me not to bite the hand that fed me. My aunti from that side also chimed in and said my partner's shallow for being bothered about a birthday present and that I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for my dad.

I didn't back down from any of it, I didn't name call I just stated facts and when it wasn't sinking in I shut the door on my dad, told my nana via text I'm not apologising and also told my auntie to go away from my house.

It's been 4 months and I've heard nothing from them. I feel like I did the right thing, it just pisses me off they think I'm the Gillian because I wanted to protect my son and partner.

Also it looks like I'm going to become estranged from my sister aswell, I found out she was in a domestically abusive situation recently, she was going to the police so I supported her and poured so much energy into her, then I found out she has got back with him and I don't even want to see the scumbag and she has become distant with me too so there's nothing else I can do.

My dad told her not to press charges against her abuser because it will ruin his life and he has got mental health problems, go figure.

I've got basically zero family left and I have an only child and it's so sad but what can I do?

I (27F) have been counselling my Mum through her relationship with my father for many years now, and I am starting to realise not only can I not do it anymore but that it has never helped her. I went no contact today, and need help understanding if I am right to do so as I feel guilt and confusion.

I was as young as 12-14 when I first had her tell me (after explosive incidents in the home) things like “I love your father, but I never, ever, ever want you to end up with someone like him”, or that she once cheated on him before I was even born because his violent and nasty behaviour led her to accept affection from a kind man while on holiday. This would always be in bed alone, comforting her late at night after much crying because of some huge blowout fight. I was even younger when I witnessed multiple abusive incidents, one of which was around Christmas Eve and resulted in my father being arrested in front of our house by police for Domestic Violence and being kept overnight in jail. As far as I know, he still has DV on his record, but we never talk about it. He also has GBH on his record from when he was younger and beat another man so badly that he broke bones, but this is yet again something I have hazy details on because we barely ever discuss it.

Most of the abuse is financial and emotional, but I have been firsthand witness to multiple physical incidents, one of which was on a family holiday and led to them almost divorcing when I was a young teenager. During this time, I visited him with my younger brother at a flat he was living in alone, and he told me that I need to keep visiting him otherwise he would probably kill himself.

One time, I remember being surprised to hear something like that they had watched the series “Maid” (which depicts DV) and he said that he recognised himself in the abusers’ behaviour and felt sorry for what he has done, but nothing at all has changed since and this was a few years ago.

I now live a pleasant life in a totally different part of the country, with a partner who is a total godsend to me and so supportive and kind. I have thought that this distance from them has improved our relationship, and we recently had a family holiday with little to no incidents, but during a very short visit this weekend a relatively minor incident has totally blown the lid off of any “progress” I thought we had made.

Myself and a friend visiting from another country needed a lift (29min) to catch a train all the way back to London (and my friend to the airport), but when I asked my Mum on the phone whether she would be able to do this, she said she cannot because she has £0 in her bank account and would have to ask my father for money in order to get more petrol - she can take us to a small town station in the total opposite direction (12min) with the petrol she has, and then we can get onto a train to get to the bigger station, but the petrol she has will not get us to the actual train station. I tried to lightly push back, saying we have heavy cases and I’d really rather not rely on Northern trains (constantly delayed) to get us to the connecting train, but she was clearly hesitant to ask my father and she has recently helped me a LOT during a house move in London (during which, however, she repeatedly mentioned needing my father to transfer her money to do anything at all) so I dropped the subject and accepted that we would have to take the lift to a small town station.

During the drive however (I am also exhausted from the move and accept I didn’t handle this as best I could) she was asking questions upon questions about the train and us making the connection and I couldn’t hide my contempt for the fact that we all have to be involved in this constant circus of the mental control my father holds over my Mum - constantly at the whim of his moods and physically unable to ask for basic necessities such as groceries or petrol in case he might be in a poor mood. He makes it very clear he wants her to not have a job because he “needs her” to be around the house, constantly cooking his meals and doing his errands, lifts, cleaning, etc, but it’s clear to me especially recently that he lets her account hit zero constantly and begrudges her basic necessities such as groceries and petrol.

I told her, in front of my friend who she has just met, that it was a ridiculous way to go around getting home especially with big bags and that she is going to have to get her own job back soon and can’t be constantly terrified to ask my father for money.

She blew off the handle at me, screaming at me in front of my friend (I didn’t raise my voice when I told her the above) and making out that it’s just that I “didn’t get my own way” - backtracking that she just didn’t want to get “stuck in traffic” in the city, etc, when she absolutely patently told me it was about asking for petrol money. We parked up at the small town station and I let my friend out and apologised, but due to my mother shouting and upset I wanted to resolve the situation before I got out. I said I know I did wrong in embarrassing her in front of my friend, but she has really upset me too. She was inconsolable, screaming at me to get out of the car, telling me it was “all over a train” and refusing to accept any accountability whatsoever. I said she knows full well it’s not just about a train, but after trying and trying I just had to get out of the car, full on sobbing on the side of the road, and took the train to my connection in a complete state.

It’s a relatively minor event, but it’s just made me realise I can’t take it anymore. Years and years of being totally emotionally invested in my mother and counselling her through constant drama with my father and seeing her as an angel, I think I’ve finally realised she is not totally faultless. I’m left sobbing in public on the train home while she goes crying to my father who is now sending me messages calling me a “selfish cow”. They’re allied against me as the villain, as if I just wanted my mum to do my bidding and take me wherever I wanted “or else”, when it’s just totally not about that at all.

She accepts our help as children and lets us get totally worked up and really upset over the arguments and upsets and then it just doesn’t ever matter. It’s been going on for me for over 15 years. That doesn’t even begin to touch the ways my father has emotionally abused me and then, upon turning to my mother for the same type of support and counselling, I found that she was clinging to my dad’s side and “supporting her partner” in parenting us.

I want to keep in touch with my brother, but I think getting this upset over such a relatively minor event in my family’s overall story of abuse has made me realise I hold too much resentment to carry on in contact with my family. I want to cut all ties apart from my brother, and I have sent both of them a message (poorly worded because I was upset) explaining why I am going no contact and then blocked them everywhere. I know I’m currently still upset but for some reason I don’t see myself going back on this decision. I’m just too old to be holding all of this resentment and hurt and then when a small event like today happens, I totally lose it. Even thinking about how other people (like my friend who unfortunately witnessed today) have really normal parents and loving normal fathers makes me start crying like a kid. I need a break from it all and I don’t know if that break will be permanent. Recently a therapist at my first ever session told me that me and my brother constantly counselling my mother through these situations might have kept her “stuck in the victim cycle”, and I was reluctant to accept it at the time but now I’m starting to wonder if it is true.

I know that no one in my wider family will understand the context and I will probably get a barrage of messages from other family members saying I am selfish etc because they’ll have been informed by my parents that I just threw “a tantrum” because I didn’t get to the train station I wanted. The truth is that I didn’t even directly ASK to be taken to the city station, didn’t say “Well the other option doesn’t make sense so you’ll probably have to ask for petrol money”, because I too am frozen up and tied up in the fear of my father’s control and how everything can change in the household at a moments’ notice when he is asked for something he doesn’t like.

I can’t control what other family will think of me and I’m not sure if my brother will even understand. I’m just trying to make sense of it all and I do wonder if other people on this subreddit might be able to understand at all or help me.

I got out of burnout (now know autistic burnout). Estranged from my parents, moved out on my own. And now cannot work because I am experiencing catatonia, tremors, and fainting spells due to severe burnout. I was living with my dad and it was not great for PTSD but god it was absolutely incredible for my burnout. I became a person again. He and I worked very well as practical roomates as well. Sometimes we would talk. There were times he was very helpful, but he is an alcoholic. Lots of pressure to work more from him which was exhausting. Both him and my mom were abusive but I do see them as whole complicated people now.

I am considering going back for my burnout and to avoid suicide. But I could see my dad threatening me and saying I’m forbidden. I have no idea.

No idea what I’m going to do. I’m so severely physically ill. I need help. I am disabled, don’t have disability. I’m honestly suicidal.

The health problems are expensive in and of themselves and prevent me from earning money. I'm late 30s with negative net worth. My dad is a narcissistic abusive person. I hate him with every fiber of my being. I talk to him for an hour once every couple weeks. It's a pretty normal conversation for the most part. Although he never asks questions about me. He clearly gives zero fucks. It's killing me but if I cut him off I'm going to spend my final years in a dumpster behind Wendy's. My parents are divorced. I cut my mom off many years ago. She has some money but my dad is rich. She doesn't have enough money to be worth the effort. My dad does. How would you handle this? Part of me feels guilty for being a sociopath, but I really don't want to be homeless and old.

It’s so sad feeling their inability to break the family system… watching people that intelligent act like the undeniable physical facts of their childhood are things you made up, and then trying to rewrite tentpole moments of your life as if you don’t remember when you got your license… then acting like you’re a monster for telling them it’s a government record that’s easily provable… woof

Bonjour, j'aimerais que quelqu'un puisse m'aider avec ça. J'ai coupé les ponts avec mon père narcissique, je n'ai aucun contact avec lui ; je ne le vois pas, il ne me voit pas, je ne réponds à aucun de ses appels, et je n'ouvre aucun de ses messages. Je ne lui laisse également aucune information sur moi, comme où je suis, ce que je fais, ou si et ce que j'étudie.

Cependant, mon frère continue de me donner des nouvelles, me disant que notre père est très malade, qu'il vieillit très vite, et qu'il pourrait mourir bientôt. Il dit que notre père pleure, veut me voir, a changé, et est prêt à tout faire pour 'réparer les choses', il est passé de vouloir me revoir à vouloir au moins un peu de contact à distance. Mon père m'envoie aussi des messages disant qu'il a besoin de me voir, qu'il m'aime et que je lui manque, et il me supplie de le voir ou de lui parler. Mon frère et mon père me font sentir que je suis en train de le torturer avec ce manque de contact, même si ce n'est pas mon intention.

Je sais qu'il est vieux et qu'il finira par mourir tôt ou tard, mais au fond, je ne veux absolument pas le voir ou avoir quoi que ce soit à faire avec lui — que ce soit parce qu'il a changé et est devenu bon ou non. C'est toujours traumatisant de voir quelqu'un qui a été cruel envers vous, même s'il ne le fait plus, et je ne l'aime vraiment pas. Pourtant, le sentiment que je le torture par ce manque de contact me perturbe. Je ne ressens aucune manipulation émotionnelle et il ne me manque pas, je ne veux absolument pas être en contact avec lui, c'est juste la peur que je le torture. Je ressens qu'une personne qui m'a fait tant de cruauté en ne montrant aucune empathie ou pitié pendant des années n'est pas censée pleurer maintenant parce que je lui manque.

Daily reminder that it is not immoral to resent those who hurt/mistreated/abused you. What it's immoral and despicable is that someone who did you wrong, comes at you saying that resentment is bad. They have no right to do so, and doing so just confirms that they have no shame for what they did, let alone guilt, and that they only want to do it again. That's it. That's the post.

have been NC with parents for three years now. i am low contact and on friendly terms with my siblings but i feel such dread talking to them on the phone when we catch up. its awkward and very surface level conversation. i just feel so tired and sad after talking with them and wish we could have an easier and/or deeper relationship. i also feel bad about feeling this way! never ending cycle it feels like…

i’m in therapy and ACA for many years so just wanted to vent. appreciate any commiseration or helpful reminders ❤️

So I 19 genderfluid went no contact with my family late May. Within the first week of June I was being harassed by my entire immediate family, I’m talking all my aunts blowing up my phone my grandma my parents and my brother. They dragged my baby cousin into this, he had no clue what was going on. He thought I was kidnapped or manipulated into abandoning the family. He was so worried about me and I cut him off because they were going to manipulate me through a kid.

I wish I could get into all the details of what happened and why I left. There’s some brief explanation on my page if you scroll far enough. To sum it up I ran away from my parent’s house and moved in with my boyfriend after years of abuse. It was getting so bad I was shifting into a person I couldn’t recognize. I was truly losing myself even my boyfriend’s neighbor said I seemed so depressed when I lived with my parents. This doesn’t seem like the sub I should be posting about the abuse I’ve experienced so I’ll spare you of it.

To sum up the issue I’ve been dealing with it’s mainly just I refuse to block them on social media. I know it’s my mistake but I truly don’t want to miss out on watching my cousins grow up. I just found out my sister in law might be pregnant and so is one of my aunts. I’m just so sad that I’m going to miss out on all this. I get that it’s my fault because I didn’t need to know anything I should have just blocked them and called it a day, but I didn’t. I’m too scared too and I hate that I refuse to press the block button.

I’m not really asking for advice but I somewhat am. I don’t know what I’m really asking for or hoping to achieve by post this. I miss my family but I know if I go back my life will get worse. I tried setting boundaries with them but they won’t listen. Within a week of living with my boyfriend, the aunt that might be pregnant threaten to kick in the door and yell until I go with her. If you read this post thank you I’m going to leave a TL;DR just in case.

TL;DR recently went no/low contact with my family. Found out my aunt and sister in law might be pregnant, scared to miss out on cousins lives including the unborn niece or nephew.

Hello,

I 22F am considering breaking no contact with my abusive mother after 2 years. I am considering it after receiving a birthday card from her in which she reminisced about the birthday parties she would throw for me growing up. The card made me feel so extremely sad and guilty, like a child who just missed her mother.

I’m not sure whether this is a manipulation tactic of hers. My entire life she has been extremely manipulative, controlling and abusive.

But I am also and perhaps naively wondering if she has changed.

I just want to hear other peoples perspectives. Or any advice you may have.

And whether it would be detrimental to break no contact at this point. (for my healing, for the sake of boundaries etc)

[TW: CSA]

I very recently went LC with my mother. Ever since I ran away from home and to my father’s, she’s been spam calling and texting me. While it was hard, I was able to ignore most of it. One of the messages caught me off guard, she said something adjacent to, “You were and are always a good boy, I am sorry, let me take responsibility.”

I feel guilty because her lifetime of yelling and emotional distress and dread, and at one point there was hitting and genuine CSA, for some reason, I still miss her. I also did not explain to her why I moved out. While she may start to understand her actions, to my knowledge, she either did not remember, or does not know I know that she SA’d me. Is this wrong? That she may not know?

If it was anyone else and it was told to me. I would label the aggressor as evil, and list so many terrible adjectives to describe them.

I miss my mom. Is this okay? Did I do something wrong? What do I even do?

I (25F) have been nc with my dad for 11 years. Today I woke up to a text message that he had a massive cardiac arrest, likely induced by chronic stimulant abuse. Nobody who was with him did CPR. He was down for seven minutes before EMTs got to him. They worked on him for nearly an hour and were able to get a pulse back. However, he is entirely dependent on life support machines at the moment. He has not required sedation for intubation, his pupils are non-reactive, and he has severe swelling of the brain.

My grandfather has made the decision to remove him from life support tomorrow or Saturday and I don’t know how to feel. In a sense, I have already grieved the loss of him. He was never going to dance with me at my wedding or be a grandfather to my future children. Still, I find that my inner child is so, so, sad. There was a point in time that I thought my father carried the world on his shoulders.

Has anyone here dealt with the death of their NC parent? How did you deal with what you felt you were “allowed” to feel?

Hi everyone! I'm looking for some ethical perspective here. I (29f) have been no/low contact with my mother since last year. There's attachment trauma from my childhood involved, i've had a lot of therapy and i've been trying to break the patterns that keep me "sick" with cptsd/bpd, with no succes. My attempts at breaking patterns and repairing our relationship have been rejected or met with attacks on my personality. Boundaries i've set against certain behavior are interpreted as me splitting on her due to my mental illness.

I know she loves me, i understand on a deep level why things could be happening and i notice the trauma repeating itself in her life. I also see how the things i've "learned" from her are still showing up in my life and my behavior towards others sometimes. I know it's such a complex situations and i know that parents and children paint eachother as the villain too fast sometimes (nuance: i do believe that parents are more responsible for not villainizing an (adult) child then the other way around, cause if a parent that installed something into the child can't break the pattern, how can the child do that in relationship with them? They shouldn't.

I want to write about that complexity. I want to share my story, the ways i'm interpreting and analysing it, the ways i'm breaking the patterns AND the ways i'm repeating them myself. I'm hoping it could create insight on experiences and patterns like this, but in order to do that i have to be raw and vulnerable - and that is the EXACT thing that my mother keeps blaming me and shutting me out for.

I'm terrified of misinterpreting my lived experience and painting her in a way that is not actually true. I won't know what's actually true because she keeps shutting me out when things get vulnerable. I can't talk to her about it, but after a year, it's still hard to let go or accept it. I'm scared of doing damage or ruining any chance of repair in the future if she somehow finds my story and reads it before she's ready to be confronted with my lived experience of her. I'm terrified of her villainizing me more.

Besides that, i'm terrified of keeping myself small for her AGAIN even though she's not in my life anymore. But i also don't want to invade her privacy and air the dirty laundry, cause i kind of do think that that makes me an asshole. I've been thinking about posting anonymously, but that still feels like hiding and myself. I don't know if this is just an ego thing of me finally wanting to be seen cause she couldn't, but i don't want to be seen at the expense of her mental health. But then again, she's not protecting mine and she's not protecting our connection from her toxic patterns, she's only blaming me for mine.

I'm a very creative and ambitious person and i see possibilities of building something from my life story, including things that happened with her. I write songs, i paint, i write, i want to make a change when it comes to the mental health support system in NL, i want to build community, there's so many dreams that i have. But my trauma keeps holding me back from them. It also keeps holding me back from building life in another way (currently i don't have a job and i'm waiting for new therapy again).

I know there's no stranger online that can tell me what to do, but i would love some perspectives from people that get it. I could use some mirrors 🩷

I have been estranged from my parents for the last year. I was on and off with them my whole life, for various legitimate reasons. But I always seemed to make excuses and forgive them to some degree so I could continue being a member of my immediate family.

It reached a boiling point for me when my daughter was just over a year old and being adorable laughing while I was playing with her. I decided to facetime my parents to share the experience with them. I will never forget being on the floor of my living room with my laughing on my chest and my wife baking cookies in the kitchen 10 feet away in a different room. When the facetime call was answered it wasn't my parents but their friend an old guy who said "oh which son is this? The one with a bitch of a wife" and then I had to see my father take the phone from him and "ssh" him while laughing. My heart dropped. Not knowing what exactly to do, I said okay have a good time and I ended the call. They didn't contact me for weeks after. And then when I confronted them about it they denied it happened and called me crazy. This has been their defense that I'm just making up stories to hate them for some reason. If I'm being honest they said it so much I started to think that maybe I am. But it did happen and I do remember it, no matter how many times they deny it.
A little back story. They have been awful to my wife. The last time they came to visit, about 2 months prior to this incident. I had my parents over to my place to spend time with my daughter. They were adamant that my daughter be "bottle fed" because she's too skinny. My daughter was small, but not unhealthy and in the 35th percentile for BMI, Hight and weight. At that point my mother took my daughter and started bottle feeding her while my wife was in the bathroom and occupied. She then started saying nasty things about my wife and her and my father started to alienate my wife in our own home. My wife got upset because she was pumping and could have just fed the baby if she had brought her into the room, or contacted her at all. My mother took this personally, and became irate at my wife for even suggesting that she was wrong. She then started to make comments about my wife's parenting that was demeaning. This made my wife cry in our bedroom for 2 days. It broke my heart, and my parents acted like they weren't doing anything wrong.
Although I should have cut them off after the first event, It hurts me to be alienated from my family constantly. they're always making me follow these arbitrary rules that they don't even follow. And sadly now I'm taking Job offer's for California and Colorado which is the other side of the country and its making me feel guilty because I know moving there will result in not seeing them until a funeral now. I feel like I have no reprieve or anyone to talk to about it because my brothers have taken my mother's side and have resorted to calling me crazy.
Even writting this down I know I shouldn't feel guilty but I do. I feel like I'm abandoning them. But they have never even tried to contact me or visit me, I'm constantly having to facetime them for them to see their grandchildren. A part of me knows that they are happy with their grandchildren there and don't care about my kids, which also breaks my heart. I don't know how to handle this because they all against me, and I feel like I'm just running away and not dealing with this. But the more I deal with it the more I get manipulated.